Creating a ticket on behalf of the requester

There may be times when you need to open a ticket on someone else's behalf. For example, you may be providing support to someone using a telephone (and not Zendesk Talk, which creates a ticket for you when you take the call) and you want to capture the support request in a ticket. You can create a new ticket and then set the person you're providing support to as the ticket requester.

Also known as proactive tickets, tickets created on behalf of an end-user can be public (the end-user for whom it was created can view the ticket), or private (the end-user cannot view the ticket, until the ticket is manually made public).

If private ticket creation is enabled, click Public Reply so the end-user can access the ticket immediately. If private ticket creation is not enabled, the ticket is accessible by default, and no action is necessary.

If the requester is an existing user, begin entering the user's name, email domain, or organization name in the Requester field and the relevant results appear. Select a user.

Note: Alternatively, you can open the user's profile, then click User options in the bottom toolbar and select New ticket. The user's name automatically appears in the Requester field.

If the requester does not yet have an account, add them by clicking +Add user at the bottom of the search results.

Enter the ticket data, then click Submit as New.

The requester receives the new ticket email notification, if you have a trigger for this action.

Creating a private ticket for an end-user

Agents can open a ticket that is not visible to the end-user for whom they are creating it, and can choose when (or if) to allow the end-user to access the ticket.

Private ticket creation must be enabled before an agent can use it. You must have administrator privileges to enable this feature. See Enabling private ticket creation.

When a private ticket is created for an end-user, the end-user is included as the ticket requester; however, some notifications and other ticket-related events are not triggered. For instance:

The end-user is not notified that a ticket has been created on their behalf.

Private tickets do not show up in the end-user's My Activities list, or in Help Center searches.

Once your admin enables private ticket creation, you can create a new ticket on behalf of an end-user.

To create a private ticket on an end-user's behalf

Hover over the +Add tab in the top toolbar, then select Ticket.

The Internal note option should be selected by default.

If the requester is an existing user, begin entering the user's name, email domain, or organization name in the Requester field and the relevant results appear. Select a user.

Note: Alternatively, you can open the user's profile, and click New ticket. The user's name automatically appears in the Requester field.

If the requester does not yet have an account, add them by clicking +Add user at the bottom of the search results.

Enter the ticket data, then click Submit as New.

All comments default to Internal note (private) from then on, including comments added via email, voice recordings, and the like, until you make the ticket public.

Using private tickets internally

There a number of internal uses for private tickets. You can:

Make records of calls and meetings with your customers. These can be stored as tickets, meaning you get a more accurate picture of your Support team's effort, without bothering your customer.

Take action on issues that you can't share. Sometimes tasks need to be carried out on behalf of a customer account -- investigations or corrective actions -- that might be sensitive. With a private ticket, it can remain internal.

Prepare for an interaction before communications open up. Because private tickets can be shared just by adding a pubic comment, you can use the ticket to gather materials, prepare, or take notes, then make the ticket public when you're ready to address it with the end-user.

Send someone else a task. Throw together a private ticket, record some steps or actions that need to be taken, and assign it to someone else, or set it in a queue for the next available person.

You can associate a private ticket with a customer, meaning the record is there for future reference, and you get the value of reporting, whether that's accurate accounting of what your team is doing, or the amount of work you're doing on behalf of a particular customer or organization, without involving the end-user until you're ready..

Changing a ticket from private to public

Private tickets can be made accessible to the requester and any CC'd end-users. Once a ticket is made public, it cannot be made private again. However, Internal notes remain hidden from end-users, as usual.

To change a ticket from private to public

Above the comment entry box, click Public reply.

Enter your comment, then click Submit.

Changing a ticket from public to private

If a public ticket has only one comment, you can make the ticket private by changing the Public reply to an Internal comment. This works only on tickets where there is a single, public comment.

Note that when you change a Public reply to an Internal comment, you cannot make it public again.

You can set this workflow up using triggers, as long as you're on the Team plan or above.

"Notify requester of received request" is a default trigger, but you can alter it to include a condition: Current user > Is not > Agent. This will make it so the trigger will only fire when the person submitted the ticket is an end-user.

Then you can clone that trigger and chance that new condition to Current user > is > Agent. Change the text of the email to whatever you would like it to say, for that scenario, and you'll be all set!

Is there any way to see tickets I've created and sent after the fact? When you send a new ticket, it instantly disappears.

Because we have to communicate back & forth on a daily basis with another help center using Freshdesk, this presents some challenges, as the two platforms aren't always compatible. Often we find our first attempt to send a ticket didn't go through, so we have to write the entire thing out a second time and try again.

If I could find my sent tickets somewhere and simply add another reply to get that ticket sent again, it would be very beneficial!

To see tickets on which you are the requestor, go to your profile in Support, and then select "requested tickets" - this will show you all of the tickets that you have created, so long as the requestor has not been changed.

When I create new ticket on behalf on someone else, the requester do not get any email with my response. It doesn't matter if I send as a new or open ticket. If, on the other hand, I send an update on the same ticket that I just created, the requester get the message immediately including the first part of the ticket. What am I doing wrong?